I finished my job education, became a member of a political party in Germany (Piratenpartei Deutschland) and right now I’m looking for a job.

Also, I got two new blogs, one is very personal, so you better ask me for a link The other one is my German blog where I post my political opinions: Marco’s PolitBlog

For now this blog got pretty cold and I have no plans to continue writing here as I don’t have the time (or ideas) anyway.

Feel free to drop me a line on Twitter or Facebook

I really need to get back to writing again, maybe I’ll get more visitors then

and yes, I know, StumbleUpon is known to bring a huge peak and after that only some visitors. Still…

P.S.: Some friends of mine started a German website called Projekt Datenrettung (no frame version of Projekt Datenrettung).

Dear Sir or Madam,

I’d like to inform you that my website, www.ruelicke.net, no longer violates the blog quality standard rule 12. I’d appreciate it if you undo the deletion of my account.

Further I’d like to complain about the policy regarding the deletion of accounts. I can understand it, if you delete accounts which heavily violate the rules, however, I do not understand, why you just delete an account because the last post was longer than 3 months ago. In my opinion, at least a warning and a request to update the blog/website is a must.

If you consider the “Entrecard – critical load” email as a warning, be assured that I did not read it as a warning. I suggest you review your policy regarding deleting accounts, especially as we, the authors of the blogs/websites, do not know when one of your moderators reviews our site. Maybe we scheduled a post to update our site but the deletion was done before/exactly on the day the post went live? Just some thoughts about it.

Regards,
Marco Ruelicke

Their reply

Please read the following from our blog quality standards page. This is not a new rule, and has always been our policy:

Blogs that do not meet our quality standards will be removed from the network. Due to the large number of accounts in the system we are unable to warn account owners of violations prior to deletion. It is your responsibility to ensure that your site does not violate our standards. This account was not deleted until a few days after you received the notice to review the rules.

Because your blog has been inactive for over 90 days, it will be treated as a new blog and we will require 5 quality posts in order for it to be reinstated. The one where you wrote under pressure, complaining about not getting a warning does not count towards that quota. And FYI, your widget is not working and has not been since your account was deleted, so no one is “grabbing” any clicks from you.

My reply

I assume with this kind of policy you’ll most likely loose many customers. I have no interest in signing up again as there is no way to re-gain the points I accumulated until now. I didn’t even have the time to spend those points, meaning that I had no benefit from Entrecard at all.

As far as I’m concerned about the quality standards policy, I do not remember ever reading about it when I signed up. I did read everything important to make sure I do not violate any kind of ToS.

Using the excuse of not being able to inform/warn account owners doesn’t work in my opinion. You have the time to review each account, so you’ll have the time to send pretyped emails to the account owners.

Anyway, as I see it, Entrecard has no interest in keeping a customer. Even with no real time to keep my page up-to-date, I still had the time to give other Entrecard users the chance to have their ads on my site. In my opinion, you should use “account activity” as another part to decide if a site has to be considered “dead” or not.

It is just a suggestion from a costumer, who stayed with Entrecard even after many of his friends decided to quit.

Have a nice day
Marco Ruelicke

The conclusion

I drop Entrecard, like many other people did. I’d guess, Entrecard is going down, quality and customer wise. Maybe they should reconsider parts of their policy as it is anything but healthy.

What’s your opinion about Entrecard?

Anyway, to get on topic, I just received a mail notification that my EntreCard account got deleted:

Your account ‘Ruelicke.net’ on entrecard.com has been deleted. The administrator gave the following reason:
Rule 12:

http://entrecard.com/docs/doku.php?id=blog_quality_standards

Please contact deleted@entrecard.com if you have any questions regarding this action.
Please include the following:
User ID: ####

Thanks for just deleting it without asking me to update my blog! The only “warning” (though I don’t consider it as one) was another mail received 6 days ago:

Greetings, faithful Entrecard members.

We are experiencing a slowdown as a result of regularly increasing load. In other words we’re becoming more popular and it’s causing problems

Those who have been with us the longest are aware that these things happen when Entrecard hits milestones or users and widgets, etc. and we always scramble to fix it as fast as possible. Most importantly, we always do what is necessary to get the site back to its typical fast self.

So we will be having a performance-related outage 7 hours from the time of this email (on the hour) which will last for 2 hours max. We have also taken some temporary measures, in the hopes that things will be better for the next 7 hours.

I really do appreciate your patience as we continually evolve our site’s architecture to handle the load of bloggers who like our service. This compete graph illustrates how our service has grown sharply in September, and is on track to grow even more in October:
http://siteanalytics.compete.com/entrecard.com/?metric=uv – hence the load issues.

A Note about Quality Standards

While we’re down, please take advantage of the opportunity to review our quality guidelines located here:

http://entrecard.com/docs/doku.php?id=blog_quality_standards

Among the recent changes, and other rules we’d like to remind you of:

1. Blog’s must be updated within the last three (3) months
2. No full screen ads or popups
3. Blogs cannot consists of more than 50% advertisement posts, paid posts, or affiliate-linking posts
4. Entrecard widget must be present
5. No auto-playing audio -all audio must be initiated (played) by the visitor

We have taken a handful of new moderators onto the scene, and they have been combing over Entrecard weeding out everything that does not adhere to our basic quality guidelines. Thousands of accounts have been removed. To our rejoice, the overall quality of the Entrecard network has grown in leaps and bounds over the last month, and I’m sure you’ve noticed the difference. We strive now and always to create a high-quality network of bloggers that we can all be proud to participate in.

So, to wrap up, thank you for being patient with us while we deal with our increasing usage, and while we move quickly to enforce the updated quality standards network-wide

I don’t call it a direct warning. I only had like 5 minutes to read their “quality standards” and after that I didn’t have time to write any posts (this one here is written under pressure, because I actually don’t have the time, but feel like I have to write it.).

The way EntreCard is enforcing their standards is not the best way. There are other methods than just deleting an account. Right now I’m writing a mail to them, I’ll keep you updated.

on a sidenote:
the entrecard widget is still working – looks like they still enjoy grabbing some clicks from my page although they deleted my account.

Well, let’s start at the beginning:
A couple of weeks ago I finally got time again to take care of my blog. I wrote a few articles and wondered how long I’ll stay active here again.

I believe by now I’m known among my blogging friends as someone who is active like hell and then suddenly vanishes for quite some time.

I thought about the reasons which made me “vanish” and that’s what made me find my very own tagline:

“…when coding passion, gaming addiction, Internet surfing syndrome and the real life collide…”

As I read that tagline a few times I figured that I can’t stick to my theme as it won’t fit anymore. Also, I’ll have to change a some things to make my blog work with the tagline.

So here it is, my new design:

A white-blueish theme (yes, I wasn’t able to say goodbye to my blue) which is looking very clean and which is easy to read. Actually, way easier to read than the previous theme(s).

What changed? What stayed?

• The basic frame of my old design stay: a two column layout, with the content on the left and the sidebar on the right.
• I added a short menu at the top and tried to use the page foot a bit more.
• I got rid of the categories and use the Tags instead (why they are better)
• The trackbacks are no longer shown (except under “Recent Comments”). Maybe I add them later again. (HowTo: separate trackbacks and comments)
• My Advertisement section got reviewed and I’m now testing Matt’s WP125 Ad plugin
• Some plugins are gone or will go pretty soon, speeding up the loading time a bit.
• One or two plugins where added or re-implemented. (e.g. NicEdit)

Although the list is pretty long (or short), there are some things I don’t mention because they are still in the works. One of the things is my “play with me” sidebar. I’m working on making it remember which “box” you left open or which you closed, so it will show you said boxes the way you left them. Also, I plan to allow you to arrange the boxes the way you want (and make it remember it).

There are also a few bugs and some of my categories (no longer shown), tags and pages need to be updated.

Last but not least I’ll have to get a better header image. Right now it is the worst looking part of my new design, but I just have nothing better right now. I hope to get a better one, but maybe I’ll have to find a blog contest solution although I can’t offer much

that’s all for now, I hope you like the new look

Marco
P.S.: I have to admit something: I stole some of my ideas from Slevi.net and ProBlogDesign.com

Image by belljar

Jumpgate Evolution is the definitive elite space combat MMO set in an intense action-packed universe. Discover three playable nations, trade valuable commodities, take part in dangerous intergalactic raids, meet and play with friends and live out the dream to become an elite hero, all-controlling commander or infamous space pirate.

The screenshots are very promising, as are the features:

• Engage in Dog-Fights
• Explore a huge and varied universe
• Highly Accessible
• Huge Space Battles
• Three Playable Nations
• Advanced Gameplay Systems
• Player driven world

The game itself looks like a Eve Online variant, so one may wait for the Beta release to judge about it.

If you want to sign up for the beta, visit the Jumpgate Evolution homepage.

I’m signed up already and hope to be one of the many chosen for testing the game. What about you?

I don’t want to cover all of the new features.
I only cover one which I don’t use and I believe there are many people who don’t want to use either. I’m talking about the “save as local bookmark if thumbed up or if tagged”.

Maybe you noticed it already:

You stumble a site, you like it and you give your thumb up – Pew, and it is bookmarked.
You want to tag a site – Pew, and it is bookmarked.

I wish StumbleUpon wouldn’t set this feature to auto enabled, or at least they could ask us if we want to use this feature before enabling it. I’m not sure if they mentioned it somewhere and I’m a bit too lazy too Google for it.

Anyway, time to get rid of this feature:

1. Open the StumbleUpon ToolBar Options
2. Select the tab “Search & Tagging”
3. Look for “Bookmark upon Rate or Tag”
4. Uncheck the box next to “Save favorites to a Firefox bookmark folder”
5. Click “ok”

And we are done. I don’t remember if I had to delete the auto-added bookmarks on my own, so just have a look if they have been removed. If not, I guess you know how to delete bookmarks.

What do you think about this feature?
Do you have it enabled or disabled?

P.S.: I’d appreciate it if someone can tell me if he or she had to delete the bookmarks after disabling the feature.

Maybe it is the perfect timing to tell you about gaming messenger named Xfire.

Xfire™ is a new, free tool that automatically keeps track of when and where gamers are playing PC games online and lets their friends join them easily. It works regardless of game type, server browser, or gaming service that a player is using. Xfire eliminates the hassles of running multiple programs like IRC, instant messengers, or in-game friends lists to keep track of when and where a gamer’s friends are playing. It supports the best and the latest online PC games including server and non-server-based First Person Shooters, Real Time Strategy, and Role Playing Games.

But how good is Xfire really? It is time for a…

Review

The Look

First Look – it is a free software you can download. So what do you expect? The website looks great, but it doesn’t help to evaluate the casing of the software as there is no casing.

Installation – using the usual installer. Nothing spectacular, but it allows you to chose the installation path and if you want to create icons for the desktop, start menu and quick launch. It also shows which files it is installing. 4 of 5 points

First Time – The look is cool, but of course you either have to create a free account first or you have to log in with your account to actually use the messenger. 5 of 5 points.

Requirements and Look – The requirements are low, the look is great. Full points.

Installation Process

Time – Installation begins with downloading the software: The download is pretty fast if you got broadband. And 10 MB aren’t that large either. The installation process is also quick, so just give a fast 4 of 5 points.

Complexity – The installation is easy, which means I end up with 5 of 5 points.

Usage and Performance

Requirements, Look and actual performance – Xfire has surprisingly low requirements:

• PC with a Pentium processor running Windows XP, 2000 or Vista
• 10 MB available hard drive space recommended
• Desktop resolution of 800 x 600 at 256 colors (1024 x 768 at 16 bit color or higher recommended)
• Internet Explorer 5.0 with Service Pack 1 or higher
• Internet connection (broadband recommended)

It runs smooth on my old computer and it runs even smoother on the computer I use to write this article. I’d give full points, but the fact that you need Internet access and Internet Explorer makes me give 4 of 5 points.

Complexity – Xfire is easy to use, but there are some parts you will only use when you running Xfire as your major messenger -> 4 of 5 points.

Learning Curve – Using this gaming messenger, you do it by using your intuition. Full points.

Bugs – Unfortunately there are a few bugs in the software. Occasionally the file transfer won’t work, a supported game is not recognized or, although very rare, Xfire crashes without a reason. 3 of 5 points.

Personal Impression

Xfire is a very, very useful messenger. At least for me. It allows me to keep track of my gaming times, play a game and chat with my friends without having to “tab out” or getting issues with the messenger running in the background. Unfortunately there are some games which are not supported, but there is hope that they will be supported in the near future. There are many people in the community who suggest new games for support and so far the developers listen to the community. You can even suggest features or, for the more experienced user, create your own Xfire skin (or you just chose one of the many existing already).

Summary

I believe Xfire deserves the 4.4 points out of 5 possible points. It is one of the best messengers for the gamer. There are a few things I had to leave out as those don’t belong to a review. I’ll write another article in the near future to talk about some of the more advanced parts of Xfire.

skippy got a list with topics and a handful instructions how to fill them with music tracks to create your own, unique soundtrack for your life. It was fun to create my own soundtrack and I believe it is also a good chance to think about your life while you listen to your soundtrack.

Enough said, time to show you my soundtrack list:

• Opening Credits: Twilight And Shadow – Howard Shore & Renée Fleming – The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King
• Waking up: Easy – Seeed
• Falling in love: Ritual Dance – Michael Hedges
• Fight song: Gra’tua Cuun (Our Vengeance) – Jesse Harlin – Star wars: Republic Commando
• Break up song: The Dreaming of the Bones – Davy Spillane
• Making Up: I have the Touch – Peter Gabriel
• Life’s Okay: Everybody wants to rule the world – Tears for Fears
• Mental Breakdow: Mad World – Michael Andrews
• Driving: Sultans of Swing – Dire Straits
• Flashbacks: Heart of Gold – Neil Young
• Happy Dance: T.N.T – AC-DC
• Regret: In your Eyes – Peter Gabriel
• Final Battle: Battle Of The Heroes – John Williams – Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
• Death Scene: The Funeral of Qui-Gon – John Williams – Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace
• Final Credits: Up in Arms – Foo Fighters

Feel free to post your soundtrack as comment

So far I finally got all plugins updated and even got the time to fix an issue with the menu on the right:
If you visited the “Tutorials” or “About Ruelicke.net” section of my blog, you may have noticed that the sub entries got messed up a bit. It is fixed now, but my “friend”, the Internet Explorer, messes it up now.
I’ll see if I can fix it, if not, you may look for an alternate browser

I even got the time to finally align my Firefox advertisement properly at the bottom so it fits a bit better to the design than before.

It seems to me as I only have two or three things left which need my attention, then I can start blogging again. Two of those things are the Internet Exploder bug with the NicEdit WYSIWYG editor and the, currently missing, Gravatar avatars in the comments.

Enough for now

Marco
P.S.: I hope Germany wins the UEFA cup…